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juke · 08-14-2024, 09:02 AM

With the FHM8 era starting its 13th season, we are only one season away from using this sim as long as we used FHM6 for. So I thought this deep dive would be a good opportunity to look through the stats, and see which SMJHL teams have performed the best in this sim engine throughout its 12 season history in our league . Usually I would put all these stats into graphs, but since words are all that counts for deep dives I apologize to the grader for the very dry read you’re about to have. The goal of this is also to highlight the good teams without bringing anyone down, so I’ll just be focusing at teams on the top of the list, not highlighting the bottom.

First, I am going to focus on regular season stats only, starting with some of the best teams in the S66-S77 timeframe. At 513-233-46, MET is solidly the best regular season team overall in this period, and their 0.677 point percentage is over 6% higher than the NBB in #2. MET has never had a season below .500 win percentage in FHM8. NBB (462-280-50) represent the other team that is a tier above the rest in terms of regular season record, with their 0.615 point percentage still being 4% higher than number 3. I would say that these two teams were the most consistent in the FHM8 era, but additionally, DET and QCC have high some of the highest peaks. In fact, all 4 of these teams represent the 10 highest winning seasons in FHM8, with DET’s 82% win percentage S68 season still representing the best overall season.

High powered offenses are most people’s favorite thing to watch, and 5 different teams have produced at an average of more than 5 goals per game in an FHM8 season. MET has done it twice, NBB and VAN have done it once, but QCC stands above the rest, with the highest scoring season of 354 goals (5.36/game) just recently in S75. In fact, all of these 5+ goals/game seasons have come in S71 or later, showing that possibly teams have started to truly optimize the sim engine.

On the other hand, if you’re a fan of a strong defense system, there have been 6 seasons of 2.5 goals per game or less so far in this era. You don’t set the win percentage record without a strong defense, so the S68 Falcons take the top spot for best defensive season by a decent margin, allowing 2.18 goals against per game, 8 less goals than the 2nd place team. We see some newer teams in this list, with NBB, REG, QCC, GFG rounding out the top 5 in that order, and KEL shows up at #6 with exactly 2.5 goals against on the dot.

Based on these last two paragraphs, it will be no surprise that the best season for goal differential is the best-defensive-season S68 DET team, followed by the best-offensive-season S75 QCC team, and then 4 MET teams, 2 NBB teams, VAN, and another QCC team to round out that top 10.

What about some of the more competitive matchups or rivalries in this time? Excluding OTT and SDT due to a small amount of games played, there have been 3 different matchups with exactly a combined .500 record between teams. DET vs. NL comes in at 30 wins apiece, though NL walks away with a 1 point advantage from an extra OTL. DET shows up again, splitting 27 wins evenly with GFG in their combined matchups. And then it’s GFG’s turn to show up again, once again splitting 27 wins, this time with STL. In fact, there have been 15 different unique team-to-team matchups in FHM8 that have between a 48-52 win% combined (still with OTT and SDT removed), showing some great battles and parity for once in this write-up. On the flip side, 6 different matchups have been dominated by one team winning 70% more of the time, the highest being MET with a 54-11-1 record against STL.

I was going to continue this dive into playoff stats, but I’m already over 500 words, and let’s be honest, no one really cares about playoff stats because cups (MET 3x, DET/QCC 2x, NBB/NL/STL/COL/VAN 1x) are really all that matter. I did want to highlight a few things because it will get some newer teams on this write-up, but other than the usual suspects, NL/CAR/OTT/COL rank 3-6 in playoff goals per game, and REG/CAR/NL/OTT rank 3/4/5/7 in goals against in the playoffs per game. For matchups, MET has 4 playoff series wins against YUM and STL, and 7 teams have 3 series wins against certain opponents. The most fun matchup so far is CAR and DET splitting 2 series apiece.

In conclusion, I thought this would be more fun to write about. But in reality, MET was a tier above the rest of the teams so far in FHM8, and then QCC/NBB/DET are a tier above even the rest, so the stats and lists turned out a bit dull.

***Faelax*** · 08-15-2024, 12:17 PM

Juke stats are so back

***ghamss*** · 08-21-2024, 01:13 PM

Good write up. I just wrote a deep dive looking at the best teams in SMJHL history but I didn't consider the engines used for swimming games. This makes me think I should have!

chetib · 09-07-2024, 01:51 AM

Approved @juke @CptSquall

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